The Government of Sierra Leone has taken the final decision to go ahead with the mid-term census despite the World Bank’s withdrawal from releasing additional funds and providing further technical assistance for the exercise.

A Senior Government Official confirmed that they’d go ahead with it after the president had addressed the nation two weeks ago announcing the date. However it seems that the world Bank’s withdrawal had long been prepared for, by the Government.

Meanwhile some opposition parties say they’ll boycott the exercise saying it’s unnecessary and accusing the government of having a geopolitical agenda of creating new constituencies and districts like it happened after the 2015 census.

The Government has denied the accusations saying that the main purpose for this census is to correct errors of the last census and to digitize the data.